How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 122: Leo DiCaprio Talks Climate Change In 2016 Oscars Acceptance Speech
Leonardo DiCaprio one best Actor for Revenant at the 2016 Oscars and instead of thanking his costars he talked about how we should be supporting politicians who support Climate Change Emission reductions. And believe or not, some people didn't like it. Listen to the podcast to find out why.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session122
Well, welcome to the speaking for Blue Podcast, episode 122. Let's say this, making the Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history, our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species. And we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinated. That was Leonardo DiCaprio on his Oscar win on Sunday night, where he took time to take a shot at getting people in this wide audience, getting, you know, taking seriously climate change, taking climate change seriously. So that's what we're going to talk about today. In the Speak up for Blue Podcast, stay tuned. Welcome to the Speak up for Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care, Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak up for Blue Podcast. It's your voice for the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, Speak up for Blue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean panner. And today is supposed to be a species Tuesday, but we're going to switch it up a little bit today because I didn't put out a podcast yesterday. So this week is going to be a little bit jumbled. I was sick. I'm still sick. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but I've got a really bad, I go into really bad coughing fits and I know you don't want to hear about that, but that is my excuse for not getting Monday's episode up and ready to go. So I apologize for that. But today we're going to talk about some interesting things that happen at the Oscars on Sunday evening. And we're going to get to that in just a minute. I just want to thank our supporters on Patreon, Chris and Claire, Jeffrey, Dr. Judith Weiss and Ron and Judy. Thank you very much for your support on Patreon. You can go www.speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, if you'd like to support our ocean conservation message to the podcast community. So today we're going to talk about something interesting. I did not stay up yesterday to watch or on Sunday to watch the Speak Up for Blue, or just to speak up for Blue podcast. I did not stay up to watch the Oscars last night. To be honest, it doesn't really interest me. I was in Montreal all weekend, hence my voice is a little raspy. We were watching the Montreal, Canadians versus the Leafs Montreal one, which is a good thing. But anyway, I didn't watch the Oscars last night or on Sunday night. I'm recording this on Monday. But something interesting happened. I mean, there's a lot of things going on. If you haven't followed anything that's going on with the Oscars, there's a big race issue as it seems to be every year, and especially this year, with a lot of things going on in the US. But the other thing that was happening is Leonardo DiCaprio, who started in the movie Revenant, won the best actor, so won the Oscar for best actor, in his speech instead of thanking his director, instead of thanking the other actors, instead of thanking, you know, the production like normally, it happens. He took the time, and you heard it in a little bit in the clip at the beginning. He took the time to really get people aware of climate change and to say, "You know what? This is what is happening. We need to ensure that we're supporting leaders who are not supporting greed." And what he's talking about that is if you notice, especially in the US, probably even Canada, many major politicians, many major developed countries, the politicians who speak out against climate change or deny climate change or say it's not as bad, are the people who are funded by big oil and gas. That tends to happen quite a bit. So he was bringing that to, and they do an effective job. I mean, for the last 30 years, they've really suppressed the issue of climate change, even though scientists have discovered it. They've published papers on it. Big oil and gas have funded counter papers that really didn't make any sense. They published it in papers that really didn't have anything to do with what, you know, science is all about, and so forth. So they basically got a lot of denial in. And it was a shame. And it was probably one of the biggest blunders in science communication in our history because this is such an important issue. And right now we're feeling the effects of climate change. You know, in the speech, Leonardo talked about all the different things that are happening, all the different things that were happening in 2015 and how it was the hottest year on the planet. Well, I don't know about you guys, but up here in Canada, we've had the warmest winter in our history, and we've barely had snow. And when we do, it goes away within the day. We always have threats of a big storm, you know, 20, 30 centimeters of snow, which we get really excited about. And then nothing, you know, places in the U.S. are going through droughts. On the east coast, they're going through major storms that come in in extremes and then shut down the city for a few days to a few weeks. Climate change is really changing things, especially this year. And I like the fact that Leonardo put that up, you know, basically said, "I'm going to take this platform that I have." I won the Oscar. Instead of using it for myself, I'm going to use it for the planet, and I'm going to use it for all the people, all the politicians, all the scientists, all the marine conservationists and other conservationists out there, that I've been doing there damn just to get climate change on the minds of people for decades. He's going to use that platform to speak to millions of people. I don't know how many people watch the Oscars. I'm assuming it's quite a bit. I'm assuming we're probably talking in the millions, right, like 10, 20 million? Maybe I don't know. But quite a number of people do. And he took that platform, didn't really over example, I spoke really well. And I found it interesting. I thought, "Hey, you know what, this is Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm not a big fan of his acting, to be honest. He's done some great movies." But that's besides the point. The point is he's very aware of what's happening with the ocean. He started a number of funds and campaigns to stop the destruction of habitats, especially for endangered species. He's done a lot of PR things for marine conservation, especially climate change. He's teamed up with Dr. Sylvia Earl a number of times, who's essentially the ocean hero right now, one of the ocean heroes. And it's just a lot of things going on. He's done a lot of great things. And it was interesting. So I posted this on my Facebook page, my personal Facebook page. And I found it was quite interesting, the comments that we got back. Some were interesting. They were constructive, let's just say. And I think others were, it just brought up an interesting point, however I think a lot of people missed the actual point of what he was trying to do, what Leonardo was trying to do. So I'll read some of the comments. I'm not going to say anybody's names, because that's just, I don't want to say anybody's names. But, you know, somebody put in, right away when I posted, somebody put a great speech. My only problem is that he spoke only on the threats to humans and ignored all the other species living on this planet. I understand that, however, he's got very little time. And the most effective way to get people enthralled in climate change is probably to say, you know, it's to say, let's talk about the human aspects of climate change, the human consequences, because then people are going to listen. When we talk about I find, and I don't think it's any less important, however, when I find, you know, it's, it's, they start to talk about, you know, we start to talk about species destruction, ocean acidification, and the effect it has on species, people don't really get that direct connection. People like, oh, that's terrible. That's terrible. But what can I do? You know, but when you start to bring it to say, hey, you know, we had to go down and move to the southern part of the planet to get snow in our shot, people kind of tend to listen, especially the people who are watching the Oscars. So I can understand why he didn't mention species. The other interesting comment is, is, well, somebody said, I would be interested to see what Leo's footprint is like in terms of, is a basic climate footprint. And that was an interesting comment. That comment got me to really think. And some people didn't like the fact that this person said that. And you know, but I can understand it because, and another person said it as well. Someone called him a hypocrite. Someone called him a nutcase, you know, and which is weird. I don't really know why he was called the nutcase. But anyway, what was happening is they, they are referring to the part where, remember the Sony hacks that came out, Sony got hacked by, I don't know if it was anonymous or some type of hacking organization because they weren't going to, they weren't going to release the interview, which was a movie that really makes fun of King, John Hill and North America in North Korea. And so as a warning, Sony's emails got hacked. A lot of things came out good and bad, but one of the things that came out was the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio one year took six flights, six different private jet flights to from LA to New York or from other places to go to in person meetings. And people are saying, well, look, if he's advocating for, you know, climate change and reducing emissions, why is he taking all these flights? And I can understand that here on the show, we always talk about reducing your footprint. And yes, it seems a little hypocritical to the fact that, hey, he's talking about, okay, we need to reduce our emissions, but this guy's flying around the world, you know, in private jets all the time, on yachts, you know, with a harem of women and a lot of people don't like that. So I can understand where people are coming from. But a friend of mine came back and he said, you know, he actually mentioned something. He goes a high profile A-lister used his Oscar acceptance time to speak up for the environment, probably the first for the first time in history. And you guys just have criticisms. And I thought that was a pretty good reply. You know, it was just, it was, it was interesting. And some people, you know, came back and said, hey, you know, this is, this is a good thing. He also came back and said to the person who called him, in that case, talking about the private jet six times in a week, you know, he responded, the same friend who responded to the first time said, he's not a hypocrite at all. He's not, he's not up there telling people to not drive their cars or fly on planes. All while he's doing much more than that, he's advocating the support of transformative leadership. People who can make the big changes in policy and global industry, we need to address this problem. Taking care of one's personal carbon footprint is a nice notion. We should all do it, but it's a feel good gesture at best. Global problems require massive global changes. This isn't an issue that's going to be solved by choosing to ride your bike more often. And he's got a good point, you know, it's, this is an issue that's way beyond, you know, doing some things that are personal. It is good to do things that are personal drive less, use less energy. It is good. Sometimes it's in this today's world is unavoidable. However, this, these massive changes have to come through policy. If we don't have it coming through policy, we are not going to survive. Climate change is not going to change by a number of people just switching to a high, you know, hybrid cars or Teslas. You know, we really need to start looking at things from a policy standpoint. And we really need to support climate change, politicians who are supporting climate change. That's what we need to do. It's simple as that. We can't go any other way. And I think it's one of those things where we really have to focus on that. And we really have to, you know, what bothers me is there are people who are doing some really great things for climate change, communication, climate change reduction, working in policy. But we tend to really get in each other's way. We tend to really criticize each other, basically saying, Oh, well, he's a hypocrite or she's a hypocrite for saying this and doing this and saying this and doing this. And really, we need to step up, you know, we really need to step up and stop getting in each other's way. We need changes fast. And that's why that whole climate change talks was a huge deal. You know, 196 countries met and agreed on some changes. Now we need to act and we need to make sure those politicians are acting. And how do we do that? We do it with our votes. You know, you have people in, you know, people in the States who are, you know, voting for their nominees right now and they're voting for Trump who is, Oh my God, scary at the very least of getting in. And just on his, on his, not necessarily on his climate change policies, but on everything else. But we vote that in. That is where we make the changes. So get out there, figure out what these politicians are saying on climate change and vote. Use your vote to make change. That's what we do. That's how we make change. And we make it as a collective. That's where the major changes come into play. So that's really what I wanted to say on that. There was a bit of controversy today on my Facebook page, not a big deal. I liked, you know, bringing up this conversation because it gave me subject matter to talk on the podcast because this is what I like to do. I like to look at what people are thinking. And then I like to not necessarily say they're wrong and I'm right. I want people to understand where people are coming from when they say we need to make big changes and climate change, right? The little changes count too. But let's be honest, the big changes where we do things and that is where we vote. We vote for those changes. We vote for politicians who are for climate change reductions, meeting international policies and really changing the world. So that's it for me today. It looked like I did. Okay. Excuse me. I almost made it without coughing too much. But thank you very much for your understanding and not replacing, not putting up a podcast episode yesterday. So we're back at it four days a week. Hopefully I'll just get better. My voice won't get lost, but you know, that's what we're going to do. We're just going to keep going and we're going to keep making big changes by, you know, really focusing on bringing ocean conservation to the podcasting community and hopefully other platforms such as like a digital magazine platform, video platform, all this type of things and you can do, you can help us do that by supporting us on our Patreon campaign at SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, and you can make a monthly contribution to support what we're doing here on this podcast and what we'd like to do in the future. So thank you very much for listening. You've been listening to Speak Up For Blue podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy Tuesday and happy conservation. [Music]